Search This Blog

Sandmonkey surfaces for interview

The Egyptian blogger Ranting of a Sandmonkey has shut down his blog, because of pressure from the government, but Atlas Shrugs snagged an interview with him recently:

...

SANDMONKEY: "Any kind of democratic reform in the country [Egypt] for the past 3 years has been rolled back specifically because there is no more pressure coming from Washington anymore."

ATLAS: Why? What happened to the pressure in Washington?

SANDMONKEY: You know what happened to the pressure in Washington. The Democrats won the Congress. There is no more pressure coming from Bush because he is not able to push people anymore to do those things. He is not able to push the Egyptian government anymore because the American public is suddenly not interested in reforming the Middle East because of what's going on in the Iraq. So suddenly the Egyptian government is not afraid of the American pressure. They are doing whatever they want to do. They are beating up demonstrators, they are cracking down on activists, they are changing the constitution, and eroding civil liberties once and for all and they are using proxies to take down bloggers.

...

It is sad to see how Democrats have thwarted the freedom agenda around the world with their craven cowardice. The Sandmonkey was linked here on occasion because he was a voice of common sense coming out of the middle east. There is more to this interview that is worth reading. (Hat tip to Larwyn.)

Jerusalem Post:
Russian forces blew up bridges on the Euphrates river held by Iranian militias several days ago, according to a report. This is the first time the Russians attacked Iranian targets in Syria.

The information came from a senior Syrian official who refused to be identified, and was reported in Bas News, a Kurdish news website.
...
This would certainly put the Iranian operations in Syria at risk. The story does not indicate what prompted the attack. Israel has been making it clear to Syria and to Russia that it would not tolerate Iranian forces in Syria it deemed a threat to its security.

Just across the border from the U.S., drug gangs slaughtered 23 people — hanging nine from a bridge and decapitating 14 more, whose heads were found stashed in coolers near the town hall.

The four men and five women discovered dangling from the Colosio Bridge in Nuevo Laredo were handcuffed, blindfolded and bore signs of torture.

A banner hanging from the bridge claimed the victims — between the ages of 25 and 30 — had committed an April 24 car bombing outside a police station, Mexican media reported.

Hours later, the 14 headless bodies were found in black bags in a gray van parked near a trade association.

The heads were in three ice chests found three hours later.

Nuevo Laredo, on the Texas border, is the site of a vicious feud between the Zeta and Gulf cartels.

Last month, another 14 bodies were found abandoned outside the mayor's office.
...
The drug cartels are fighting over access to the I-35 corridor which begins in Laredo and runs up the middle of the United…